“Li Da-Xia,” I said, and stood up. And I kissed her.
In the midst of life we are in death. It struck me, thinking later, that this was a reversible statement: in the midst of death we are in life. If I was going to put my life down—as Wilma had—then I wanted to mourn it. I wanted to regret it, and fiercely. Maybe the grey room would kill me, and maybe not, but one way or another it would transform me, and this life would be done. I wanted to be alive before that happened. I wanted to be alive before I died, and I wanted death to terrify me, not slip in like a long-expected guest.
I kissed Xie: we kissed. We wept and we kissed. Then we did more than kiss. As for the rest of that morning—I will not say more. I will keep it silently, in that holy place in my heart.
We slept then. My last day, and we slept through it, tumbled and tangled together on Xie’s narrow cot, her goddess hands folded over my belly, her breath stirring the hairs at the nape of my neck.
But how could we not have slept? I was so far beyond exhausted that I seemed to be entering already into a different world. And what had we left to say to each other, or to do? We had had our years. That I had missed them wrenched my heart, but they could not be called back now. Not even Talis could do that.
I think it was hunger that woke me—certainly I woke hungry. My newly logical body tallied the time since it had eaten and recommended starches and protein. But instead of going to find them, I lay still. Xie’s breath moved against my spine. I let myself rest in the warmth of the space between us, that opened and closed.
All my life I’d lived under the threat of death—mine, my friends’. I’d been a pawn in a scheme about the greater good, and I had kept myself asleep in order to survive. I was awake now. And I had found . . . love, all around me. Love where I had never expected it to be. Xie.
Xie, and not only Xie. Elián. Atta. Grego and Han. Love. It was everywhere. And now I was going to give it up. For the greater good. It was one thing to give it up unknowingly, as I had done for years. It was quite another to hold love in one’s hand, and then let it go.
My breath snagged. Xie’s voice came sleepily into my ear. “Greta.”
I rolled to face her. With one fingertip she traced my cheekbones, my long wolfhound nose. The fine hairs of my skin rose to meet her. Her tiny braids—undone and everywhere—licked like paintbrushes across my throat. The wind had picked up, and was blowing the yellow apple leaves like coins against the glass of the ceiling. I could hear them, fainter than the rain. “I was born under cherry blossoms,” she said. “I’ll be eighteen in the spring.”
“And go home.” Li Da-Xia was going to live.
“To the mountains,” she said, as if it were a correction. I knew the feeling: the open sky of the prairies—surely that would always be home, no matter where I had been born, or what land I was supposed to have ruled.
“I should write a note. Remind my mother to take me out of the succession.” As I said it, I realized it was not necessary. Someone would see to it. The PanPols would never consent to be ruled by an AI.
Xie made a catlike hum of affirmation, following the jump of my thought effortlessly. “My father wrote. The monks have found me a suitor. I understand his lineage is impeccable.”
“I wish . . . ,” I whispered, before I could stop myself. I wished for impossible things. It was never going to have been a fairy tale for us. There are no fairy tales about two princesses. “It’s six months until cherry blossoms. I wish we could have it.”
In answer Xie kissed me softly. “I have had eyes.”
My marriage will be dynastic, but in the meantime, I have eyes. I wished—
“Do you suppose the machines love each other?” I said. “The AIs?”
Her body was aglow in my arms. What would it be like, not to have a body?
“Hold on to yourself,” she said. “Please, Greta. Hold on to yourself. Hold fiercely.”
And she wrapped her hand behind my head—my prickling hair—and moved her hungry mouth to mine.
We were still tangled in each other when the door slid open.
I grabbed up a sheet.
It was Talis, of course, his hands in his pockets and his duster stirring like a heartbeat. I flushed, thinking he would grin, taunt. My newly opened soul was too tender for that. I knew I could not defend myself.
But to my surprise he didn’t smile at all. His pale eyes moved over every inch of us, but it did not look like lechery. It looked like sorrow. “We’re ready,” he said.
28
ZERO
I stood up.
I was wearing only a bedsheet, and I was blushing, but I was taller than Talis, and was not ashamed. “No,” I said.
Talis froze. His face was hard at first, his ancient eyes like bits of lit glass. Then it opened into something bigger—was it anger? Fear? Wonder?
“No,” I said again. “We do this my way. I want dinner.”
“Oh,” said Talis. “Okay.”